Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Tracing Nelly’s roots

By Alison Appelbe Nelly Furtado may be the Azores’ biggest claim to fame — in Canada at least.

By Alison Appelbe

Nelly Furtado may be the Azores’ biggest claim to fame — in Canada at least. The superstar singer was born in Victoria to parents from Sao Miguel, the largest of nine islands in the Azorean archipelago, 1,300 kilometres west of mainland Portugal.

Today the Azores is an emerging tourist destination — visited mainly by northern Europeans in pursuit of mild weather, spectacular volcanic scenery, abundant flora, quiet coves and beaches, and a distinctly laid back way of life.

It wasn’t always so. From the 16 th century until the advent of satellite technology in the 20 th , these scattered islands, approached on favourable trade winds, were an essential port of call for most ships sailing between Europe, West Africa, the Americas and the Far East. In other words, the Azores was a strategic and renowned location.

Ordinary islanders spent much of their time fending off buccaneers and pirates — when they weren’t subsistence farming. For all but a few wealthy landowners in what is today the Azorean capital of Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel, and the important port city of Angra do Heroismo, on the island of Terceira, the Azores was a tough backwater.

Thousands of islanders, like the Furtados, emigrated to Canada, the U.S. and South America. Little wonder then that when you stop on a rural road to chat with a man on a donkey laden with milk canisters, he talks of a brother in Toronto. Or that a Ponta Delgada taxi driver wants you to know about his aunt and uncle in Vancouver.

And while Portugal’s membership in the European Union has brought added prosperity, the Azores remains a remote beauty spot of rugged peaks and secluded lakes, lush hedgerows and pastures, winding country roads dotted with white-washed villages and tiny shrines called Imperios, unendingly and varied coastline, and a handful of small cities dominated by late-medieval fortresses and baroque churches and palaces.

Looking south from the Hotel Sao Jorge Garden on Sao Jorge — one of the lesser visited though no less lovely islands — the Pico volcanic cone rises 2,350 metres over the neighbouring island of Pico. From here it’s hard to imagine the Azores as anything but tranquil, yet volcanoes and earthquakes have repeatedly devastated the chain.

On narrow and steeply sloped Sao Jorge, volcanoes have spewed long tongues of lava well into the ocean. Called “fajas,” these island extensions are fertile. One, the Faja da Caldeira de Santo Cristo, is an internationally recognized nature reserve where cockles are harvested from a natural lake. Though visible from a mountain road, this exceptional setting is accessible only by a hike of several hours.

At the 17 th -century church of Santa Barbara on the island’s populous south side, near the town of Manadas, we hobnobbed with parishioners celebrating the Festival of the Holy Spirit (Festa do Espirito Santo), held on eight consecutive Sundays after Easter.

Small girls were dressed in their frilly finest. Several young men were crowned “emperor” for the day, symbolizing family stewardship. After mass, firecrackers shattered the serenity of the churchyard while parishioners followed a rag-tag brass band several times around the church.

Then everyone headed home for a feast that begins with a “holy soup” and includes the cured cheese for which Sao Jorge is best known — and gallons of local wine.

Ponta Delgada, on Sao Miguel, is the most contemporary Azorean city. Here conservative island fashion is punctuated by the latest outfits from Lisbon — even a little Euro-punk (Nelly would be proud). However it’s the fantastic architecture in the form of well-preserved churches and monasteries — attesting to the influence the Catholic orders had, and still have, on the Azores — that takes your breath away.

A gem is the Museu Carlos Machado, a museum devoted to traditional Azorean life in the 16 th -century monastery of Santo Andre. And when the Convento da Esperanca, also in Ponta Delgada, is illuminated for the festival of Senor Santo Cristo dos Miagres, the glittering sight is utterly over-the-top. As well, 200-year-old mansions with wrought-iron balconies and ultra-ornate Manueline carvings, typical of late-Gothic buildings found throughout Portugal, line the city’s narrow, cobble streets.

Yet on the promenade above the protected harbour are a series of modern all-glass cafes where patrons take their espresso while looking — longingly or not — out to sea. A growing number of upscale restaurants in Ponta Delgada include the elegant dining room at the Hotel de San Pedro, built on the harbour in the late 1700s as a home for an antique-loving U.S. vice-consul to the Azores. The hotel’s old-world rooms are modestly priced.

Finally, we flew to Terceira and the city of Angra do Heroismo (or simply Angra). Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its historic importance as a port and refuge, Angra is dominated by coastal Mount Brasil and, on its slopes, what was originally a sprawling Spanish fortress, still intact.

I saw wild deer ambling over this woodsy hilltop, and women doing yoga on a grassy ledge. Far below, in the Bay of Angra do Heroismo, the anchors of those sailing ships that couldn’t resist the wind and waves rest in an underwater graveyard.

Around town, and especially during Espirito Santo festivities, male college-age students wear a dark, calf-length hooded cloak introduced by early Flemish settlers — further evidence that traditions live on in the Azores.

While Azorean hotels are generally modest, and most restaurants serve traditional Portuguese foods (not to everyone’s taste), an exception here is the Pousada Angra — Forte Sao Sebastiao, built into a spectacular seafront fortress, and a member of Luxury Lifestyle Hotels and   Resorts of Europe. Rooms are contemporary; its fine Restaurant Castelinho (“little castle”) delivers both traditional and international dishes.

On the rural roads that crisscross this low-lying and richly agricultural island, boys and men practice a form of bull-fighting by which they tie a rope to a bull, let the animal loose, then taunt it by pulling it in several directions. Some things never change.

Others do. Nelly Furtado is on record as saying that Portuguese church music and folk songs are among her musical influences.

For more on the Azores, go to www.visitportugal.com .